The US government has against Google filed a new lawsuit. The Justice Department accuses the company of unfair competition. Actually, at least parts of Google should be broken up, one argues. The bone of contention in this case is the market for online advertising, in which Google holds a particularly powerful position.
Google resorts to methods that harm fair competition and act illegally in order to cement its position of power at any price. The right way would be to split the advertising division. In the end, Google is currently harming everyone but itself: both its own advertising partners and its customers. According to the ministry, website operators would earn less because of Google’s strategy, and advertisers would have to pay too much because there were no real rivals.
Of course, as you might expect, Google is not aware of any guilt. The Justice Department’s reasoning is said to be flawed. On the contrary, if the authority’s wishes were followed, the advertising fees would increase and the growth of small companies in particular would be made more difficult. Incidentally, the allegations revolve primarily around the advertising technologies in which ad spaces are auctioned off in a very short time before a user even sees the advertisement. These processes would be controlled by Google in a non-transparent manner and designed in its own favour.
Google does not seem to consider the allegations of the US government to be completely unfounded: last year there were signs of tougher action. At that time, Google is said to have offered to outsource its ad tech department to a separate subsidiary. However, the government was not satisfied with this, since the subsidiary would have remained under the umbrella of the parent company Alphabet and something would probably only have changed on paper.
In the end, of course, you have to wait and see how the courts decide. Google has been criticized several times for its business practices – also around Android or the Play Store.
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